Guy Garrick, a detective who has made a scientific study of crime, has been the hero of a number of earlier short stories. In the present novel he is engaged in tracking down a gang of motor bandits. "An expensive car has been stolen from New York, and one of the stool pigeons of the police has been mysteriously murdered with no trace of the bullet or weapon that killed her. The body is found in New Jersey, though the police believe that she must have been murdered in a ladies' pool room, which she was investigating. The police, the city detectives, the automobile detectives and Guy Garrick are all working on the problem, and the unravelling and subsequent glory of Garrick are very exciting."

r the city. The cars are taken to some obscure garage, without doubt, and their identity is destroyed by men who are expert in the practice."

"And you have no confidence in the police?" I inquired cautiously, mindful of his former manner.

"We have frequently had occasion to call on the police for assistance," he answered, "but somehow or other it has seldom worked. They don't seem to be able to help us much. If anything is done, we must do it. If you will take the case, Garrick, I can promise you that the Association will pay you well for it."

"I will add whatever is necessary, too," put in Warrington, eagerly. "I can stand the loss of the car--in fact, I don't care whether I ever get it back. I have others. But I can't stand the thought that my car is going about the country as the property of a gunman, perhaps--an engine of murder and destruction."

Garrick had been thoughtfully balancing the exploded shell between his fingers during most of the interview. As Warrington concluded,

Reviews

I cannot quite explain this book. In the midst of the publication of the Craig Kennedy books, Arthur Reeve suddenly produced this book, promoted as "The first in the new Detective series." As far as I can tell it was the only Guy Carrick book. And what is the difference: Craig Kennedy was a professor of chemistry who uses science to catch criminals; Guy Carrick is a former professor of chemistry who operates as a private detective to use science to fight crime. Craig Kennedy has a roommate/narrator named Walter Jameson, a self-procalime yellow journalist who works for THE STAR; Guy Carrick has a roommate narrator named Thomas Warren who publishes a paper called THE SCIENCE NEWS, who has friends (not,apparently, including Jameson.) on the Star. I don't know if Reeve was trying to distiquish. between his novels and his collections of short stories or if he was changing publishers and there was a problem over the name of Craig Kennedy. (By the way, Warren is as certainly mystified by science as Jameson is).

This book is certainly up to Reeves best standards, involving the fight against a gambling ring, which includes murder, arson and kidnapping among its weapons. Garrick fignts the ring with the same panache and technological flair that Craig Kennedy would have used. It has the usual fault of Reeves books as mysteries that it is not a play fair mystery and that the villain is exposed by technology rather than reasoning

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